---Nineteen
Africans are shipped to Jamestown,
Virginia, on Dutch ships, as
indentured servants.The Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese all
send African slaves to work in both North and South America during the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

1624

---African
slaves are imported to the Hudson River Valley in New York.

1638

Feb. 2Eight years after the settlement
of Boston, a ship named Desire arrives
in Boston with its first African slaves.

---Although slavery is never
technically illegal in the colonies, Plymouth
and Massachusetts Bay are the first colonies to

authorize slavery through
legislation as part of the 1641 Body of Liberties.They will be followed by Connecticut (1650),
Virginia (1661), Maryland (1663), New York and New Jersey (1664), South
Carolina (1682), Rhode Island & Pennsylvania (1700), North Carolina (1715),
and Georgia (1750).

1645

---The
triangular slave trade begins about this time—a Boston
ship brings African slaves to the West Indies to be traded

for sugar, tobacco, and liquor; these products are
then taken to New England to be sold for lumber (including masts for the ships)
and manufactured goods. Newport, Rhode
Island, and Salem, Massachusetts, will become major ports during this period,
which marks the beginning of the extensive introduction of African slaves into
the British West Indies to work on the sugar plantations.
In some respects it can be considered the first industrial revolution, in which
profits result directly from the use of cheap labor.[Hunt]

guaranteed under English common law, including the right to life, and
allows the slaves' owners to treat their slaves as they wish, without fear of
reprisal. Thus the West Indies begins the process of making slavery both African
and brutal by statute.[Hunt]

---From
1660 to about 1710, slavery converts slowly to the West Indies model. At first the distinction between slavery

and
indentured servitude are imprecise.As the planter class develops, though, slavery
is considered essential in establishing such cash crops as rice in South Carolina.
Within 50 years, Charles Town (Charleston), South Carolina, will become the
largest mainland slave market.[Berlin]

1664

---As the English take control
of
New York
,
slaves make up about 20% of the population of the city. [Berlin]

1675

---King Philip’s
War begins as population growth and new leadership in the New
England colonies create tensions between the settlers and the
Native Americans over territory and resources.This exceptionally violent year-long war will decimate both sides,
destroy land and property, and result in the end of traditional ways of life in
the native communities – hundreds of natives are forced into servitude or sold
into slavery in the West Indies, a common practice until around 1720. [Hunt]

1680

---By the third
decade of the 18th century, a system of organized agricultural slavery is well established in the Chesapeake region.Virginia’s slave population will grow from
3,000 in 1680 to 27,000 by 1720.

1688

Feb. 18The first American protest against slavery is organized by Quakers
in Germantown, Pennsylvania.

1696

---South Carolina
adopts
the provisions of the Barbados Slave Code and creates a basic outline for slavery in British

North American colonies.

1710

---Slaves make up more than 17%
(1/6) of the population of Philadelphia.

1712

Apr. 7Nine
whites are killed during a New York slave revolt; 21 slaves are executed for murder.

1732

June 20Georgia
is founded.It is the only colony that ever specifically
attempts to make slavery illegal. Its founder James

Oglethorpe,
who intends to create a classless society, wants to reserve the land and the
jobs for English labor.Oglethorpe and the other Trustees interview all potential
colonists, choosing carpenters, farmers, bakers, and other tradesmen who can
build the colony into an efficiently functioning settlement.Despite the founders’ declared intention of
providing a haven for debtors in English prisons, not one such individual is
among the original colonists.

1739

Sept. 9Slaves revolt in
Stono, South Carolina
:
25 whites are killed before the revolt is suppressed.

1741

MarchA series of suspicious fires and
rumors of slave conspiracies cause a widespread panic in New York: 31 black slaves

and five whites are executed as conspirators.

1749

May 19The Georgia
Trustees petition King George II to permit them to repeal the colony’s prohibition
against slavery.By October he agrees to
the request.

1751

Jan. 1Slavery becomes legal in
Georgia.

1752

---Landon Carter, a Virginia
plantation
owner, begins his journal, which provides an intimate look at plantation life and the

isolation, uncertainties, and fears of the
planter class.His journals, written
until his death in 1778, also record the Colonies’ movement toward revolution. [Hunt]

1753

SeptemberJohn Woolman, a New Jersey Quaker, writes
in his Journal that he has embarked on a campaign to convince other

Friends to give up their slaves.

1758

Mar. 15In order not to discourage the settlement of skilled
laborers in the state, Georgia prohibits slaves from working as carpenters,
masons, bricklayers, plasterers, or joiners.

Dec. 25Jupiter Hammon, a New York slave,
publishes the poem, “An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penitential
Cries.”

1770

Mar. 5Runaway
slave Crispus Attucks is the first person killed in the Boston Massacre.

June 28Quakers open a school for black
students in
Philadelphia
.William Penn holds monthly meetings for
blacks, advocating emancipation. n.emancipation.

1773

Jan. 6Massachusetts
slaves
petition the state legislature for their freedom.

Sept. 1

The first The first book published
by an African American is a volume of poetry by Phyllis Wheatley.

1775

---The first African American
Masonic group is organized.

AprilThe first abolitionist society
in the United States
is organized in Philadelphia.

Nov. 16Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of
Virginia, issues Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation,the first large-scale emancipation of slaves in
American history (when he offers freedom to Virginia’s slaves if they will
agree to aid the British cause by serving in the Army.Within a month, Dunmore
raises 800 soldiers, more than doubling his troops.

Dec. 14In
the Virginia
Declaration the Virginia House of
Burgesses declares Dunmore’s Proclamation “encouragement to a general
insurrection” and threatens all rebelling slaves with a death sentence.

by the Continental Congress
on July 1, when both Northern and Southern slave-holding delegates object; it does
not appear in the final draft, adopted on this date.

1777

July 8A Vermont constitution is published. [Although calling itself a state, Vermont will not be admitted to
statehood until March 4, 1791 – it is more of an independent republic at this time],
and becomes the first American colony to abolish slavery; a number of others
will follow over the next ten years. However, many of the state emancipation
laws specify only gradual abolition, beginning with the second or third
generation after the law takes effect.Slaves are listed in the Pennsylvania census through 1850. [Hunt]

1779

---Around
5,000 African American soldiers participate in the American Revolutionary War.

Dec. TNRobert, James
Robertson’s black servant, is among the small party of explorers who select the
FortNashborough site in Middle Tennessee. By 1800 nearly half the population
of the settlement (154 of 345) are African Americans – all but three of
them are slaves.[Goodstein]

declares that the state constitution grants rights
incompatible with slavery, yet the Massachusetts constitution (1780) will never
be amended specifically to prohibit slavery.

1787

Sept. 17Although the Continental Congress excludes slavery from the
Northwest Territory, the U.S. Constitution (with three

clauses recognizing slavery) is sent to the states for ratification. The new Constitution includes the Fugitive Slave

Clause, the three-fifths clause, and a
clause prohibiting the abolition of the African slave trade before 1808.[Foner,
Forever Free]

NovemberThe
African Methodist Episcopal church is founded in Philadelphia, despite resistance from both blacks and whites who,

are uncomfortable with the idea of
forming independent (not merely segregated) congre-gations.A.M.E. Founder Richard Allen chooses
Methodism as the basis for his church because it emphasizes “the plain and
simple gospel,” as well as a strong commitment to education and self-help. When
this group unites with churches in other cities in 1816, Richard Allen is
elected the first bishop of the A.M.E. Church.African Americans are creating their own national
institutions long before slavery comes to an end. [Hunt]

---Benjamin
Franklin and Benjamin Rush join the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and help to write its constitution. The

organization, established in 1784, takes an active roll in
litigation on behalf of free blacks.

1789

Apr. 30George Washington is inaugurated
President (1789-1797).

1790

---Thomas Jefferson proposes a Southwest Ordinance similar to the Northwest Ordinance, but the legislation passed by Congress estab Congress establishes no prohibition on slavery in U.S. territory south of the Ohio River.

1791

---TNThe population of the Tennessee Territory is 35,691; of
those, 3,417 (9.6 percent) residents are black.

.

MarchPresident
George Washington appoints Benjamin Banneker, an African American scientist, to the commission

surveying the District of
Columbia.

Aug. 22The Haitian war of independence
begins when over 100,000 slaves rise up against the greatly outnumbered French
planters.Revolutionary leader Toussaint
L’Ouverture ultimately forms a strategic alliance with the French but maintains control
of the island, becoming military dictator.

1793

Feb. 12The first
Fugitive Slave Law requires runaway slaves to be returned to their owners,
wherever they are found.

1794

Jan. 16 TNRobert “Black Bob” Renfro, still a slave, is licensed
by DavidsonCounty "to sell Liquor and Victuals" in his own

tavern.(Bob, the slave of Joseph Renfro, had come to Middle Tennessee on John
Donelson’s historic river voyage, leaving the groupnear present-day Clarksville on 12
April 1780.)Bob will be involved in
several precedent-setting court cases, winning at least three cases before
white juries. [Ellis]

June 20Eli
Whitney patents the cotton gin, making cotton both easier and faster to process and revitalizing the demand for

slave labor in the cotton fields.

1797

Mar. 4John
Adams is inaugurated the nation’s second President (1797-1801).

1800

--- TNOf
Nashville’s 345 inhabitants, 154 are black. [Goodstein] Only fourteen of
them are free; by 1810 there are 130 free xxxxxxxxxxxxxxblacks in Nashville. [Lovett]

Aug. 30Gabriel Prosser, a Virginia slave,
gathers an army of discontented slaves (estimated at 1000-4000 individuals) and

prepares to attack Richmond.They are
foiled by informants and severe weather.Prosser and others are captured and hanged.

1801

Mar. 4Thomas Jefferson is inaugurated the
nation’s third President (1801-1809).

Nov. 10 TNNashvillian “Black Bob” Renfro is granted emancipation from his owner Robert Searcy by an act of the Fourth

xxxxxxxxxxxxxTennessee General Assembly.(Early
Tennessee legislatures often sanctioned the voluntary manumission of slaves by
their xxxxxxxxxxxxxowners.) [Ellis]

1803

AprilToussaint L’Ouverture, leader of
the Haitian slave rebellion, is tricked by Napoleon into leaving Haiti and dies in a

French prison.His
lieutenant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, carries on the struggle against Napoleon's generals, Leclerc

and Rochambeau.Hundreds of people die in the fighting; shocking
atrocities are committed by both sides.

Apr. 30Napoleon, understanding that the
loss of Haiti
will end his dreams of a Caribbean sugar empire, offers to sell the

Louisiana Territory (which is
no longer useful to him) to the U.S.

Nov. 28Rochambeau surrenders.Dessalines
declares Haiti
to be an independent republic. Because the rebellion is successful,

it will forever after haunt American plantation owners
with the specter of violent overthrow; an early response will be the American
Colonization Society (1816).[Hunt]

1807

Mar. 25The
British Parliament abolishes the slave trade.Although Congress will also ban the importation of slaves into the

U.S. after January 1, 1808, slave shipments to
America will continue largely unchallenged until 1859.

1809

Mar. 4James
Madison is inaugurated the nation’s fourth President (1809-1817).

1811

Jan. 8-10Louisiana
slaves revolt in two parishes near New
Orleans
.The
largest slave revolt in the United States, it is

suppressed by federal troops.

1815

---About 2,000,000 Africans now
live in America
;
around ten percent of them (roughly 200,000) are free persons of

color.

1816

July 27Federal troops
are sent to destroy a Maroon (runaway-slave) settlement in Apalachicola Bay, Florida.About 300 Maroons, supported by about 20
Native Americans, hold off the troops from a tightly-constructed fort until a
lucky shot from a U.S. cannon hits the Maroons’ powder
supply.Most ofthe people in the fort are killed in
the resulting explosion; the forty survivors are sent back to Georgia to be sold
at auction.

Dec. 21The American Colonization Society is
established in Washington, D.C. Its upper-class, white male membership -- which

includes James Monroe,
Andrew Jackson, Francis Scott Key, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster – consists of
both philanthropists and slave owners who, for reasons ranging from altruism to
fear, want to enable blacks to return to
Africa.
They eventually gain Congressional support
and provide ships for the purpose; the first settlement (1820) in what is now
Liberia will grow slowly, as the settlers struggle against yellow fever and
armed resistance from natives.

1817

Mar. 4James
Monroe is inaugurated the nation’s fifth President (1817-1825).

---Richard Allen’s BethelA.M.E.Church
hosts the first
general mass meeting of blacks to protest the deportation

policies of the American Colonization Society.Three thousand people attend.

1820

Mar. 6The Missouri Compromise settles the issue of slavery in
the areas obtained by the Louisiana Purchase. Missouri joins the Union as a slave state, while Maine balances it as a free state. All remaining sections of the
Louisiana Territory lying north of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude are to
be free. (This
limitation will later be overturned by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act and by the
1857 Dred Scott case.)The act
provides that any fugitive slave "escaping into any...state or territory
of the United States...may
be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labour or
service" – but, as will be reiterated in the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), even in
the free territories, "slavery and involuntary servitude ... in the
punishment of crimes" is not prohibited.

1822

---The Illinois legislature
passes a resolution to amend the state constitution to permit slavery.Anti-slavery activists fight the proposal. They will be successful when
the amendment fails in the 1824 election.

May 30Denmark Vesey, a
carpenter and former slave who bought his own freedom in 1800, designs one of
the most complex slave plots in history, involving thousands of African
Americans in the Charleston,
South Carolina, area.On this date, the plot is revealed by a
“house slave,” and Vesey and more than 130 others are
arrested; 37 are eventually hanged.

Aug. 2Illinois passes a
referendum declaring the state free; nevertheless, a complex series of
indenture and apprenticeship laws along with frequentkidnappings of black workers will maintain
a system not much different from slavery for many years.

Mar. 16Freedom’s
Journal is published in New York
City
.It is the
first of about 40 black newspapers that will appear

before the Civil War.

1829

Mar. 4Andrew
Jackson is inaugurated the nation’s 7th President (1829-1837).

Aug. 10Following a
race riot in Cincinnati, Ohio, more than 1,000 African Americans leave the city for Canada.

Sept. 20About
40 delegates from various states meet in Philadelphia for the first national African
American convention to discuss xxxxxxxxxxxxx the abolition of slavery.

1831

Jan. 1William
Lloyd Garrison publishes the first issue of the Liberator, a weekly abolitionist journal, signaling the

emergence of a more militant attitude within the
anti-slavery movement.

Aug. 21Nat Turner, born during Gabriel
Prosser’s slave rebellion (1800), leads a band of 40 slaves from house to house

through Southampton County, Virginia, stabbing, shooting,
or clubbing every white person they find.They kill at least 55 people before being caught and executed.Virginia and North Carolina courts will
execute more than 50 people charged with participating, and vengeful mobs,
mobilized by panic, kill 200 more.

DecemberThe Virginia legislature considers a
petition to emancipate Virginia’s slaves. A motion to reject it outright is defeated.

In the intense debate that follows, one legislator declares
slavery “the greatest curse that God is His wrath ever inflicted upon
a people.” In the climate of fear created
by the Nat Turner rebellion, and facing the growing belief that slavery may be a hindrance to economic development,
the legislature earnestly
debates a gradual emancipation statute.xxxxxxxxxxxxx [Hunt] “The arguments expressed during the Virginia
slavery debate...profoundly [shape] the development of future justifications for slavery. Faced with an opportunity tto abolish slavery in Virginia,
what [results] instead [is] the xxxxxxxxxxxxx ideological cornerstone
of the Southern Confederacy.”[Curtis]

1832

---The Nullification
Controversy pits President Jackson against South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun in a debate

about the rights of a state to nullify federal law.The first state to have over-planted its soil
to the point where its productivity has diminished, South Carolina (concerned
that Congress might also claim the power to terminate slavery) declares the increasing
federal tariffs null and void and threatens to secede.

justify neither nullification nor secession, is his confrontational
response to South Carolina’s action.The
President’s tough stand on the issue demonstrates his confidence in his strong
bipartisan support from both sides of the North-South divide.[Hunt]

1833

May 18 TNBirth of Davidson County Representative Sampson W. Keeble.The first African
American elected to the Tennessee xxxxxxxxxxxxxxGeneral Assembly, Keeble was born a slave
in Rutherford County, Tennessee.

---John C. Calhoun and Henry
Clay persuade Congress to pass the Compromise Tariff, which slowly lowers the duties
on cotton.

Dec. 3The first
classes are held at Oberlin College in Ohio, one of the earliest colleges to
admit African American students. The first black students are admitted in the
fall of 1835; by 1860 one-third of its students are black. Oberlin also pioneers “the joint education of
the sexes,” enrolling both males and females from the beginning. In 1862 Oberlin graduate Mary Jane Patterson is
the first black woman to earn a college degree.

1834

May
19 TNTennessee holds a
Constitutional Convention.Major issues
under discussion include taxation and representation.Andrew Johnson attempts to curb the influence
of slave owners by limiting representation in the General Assembly to the white
population alone.Antislavery groups petition to abolish slavery, but the
convention denies their appeals, instead adding language to require the
approval of slave owners before passing any statutes related to emancipation.

---Black Baptists in Ohio
form the Providence
Baptist Association; four years later an Illinois group will form the Wood

River Baptist Association.

1835

--- TNApproximate
birth year of Davidson County Representative Thomas A. Sykes, born a slave in North
Carolina to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxunknown parents.

where she provides banquets for “firemen, church
socials, and political parties.”Sally
Thomas, although still technically a slave, has been permitted to run a laundry
business since 1817. She has used the profits to buy her children’s freedom.

1841

Mar. 4William Henry Harrison is
inaugurated the nation’s ninth President.He develops pneumonia during his inauguration and dies a month later.

Apr. 6Although the Constitution does not
provide for the Vice President to succeed to the Presidency in the event of the
President’s death, John Tyler defies a power grab by the cabinet and has
himself sworn in as President (1841-1845).[Winik]

---The U.S. Supreme Court upholds a lower court’s decision that the Amistad mutineers are the victims of
kidnapping and thus within their rights to secure their freedom in any way
possible.Through private donations, the
35 surviving Africans are able to secure passage back to Africa.

---Captured
Africans on the slave ship Creole,
traveling from Virginia
to Louisiana, overpower the crew and sail the ship

to the Bahamas, where the government grants them
asylum and freedom.

1842

---Joseph Jenkins Roberts
becomes the first non-white governor of Liberia.

1843

---Members and clergy of the
Methodist Episcopal Church split from the church over its failure to pass a promised edict

forbidding members to own slaves.The new organization is named the Wesleyan
Methodist Church in America.

---Although its rules are not
as strict as some members would wish, from its 1784 founding in the United States, the

Methodist Episcopal Church has opposed slavery. When a Georgia bishop becomes a slave owner by marriage, the

church splits a second time over the slavery issue, and the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, becomes a separate entity.

1845

--- TNProbable birth year of Shelby County
Representative Thomas F.
Cassels, born in Jackson County,
Ohio.His parents xxxxxxxxxxxxxxare “free persons of
color” in a community that is a busy hub of Underground Railroad activity.

Mar. 3Florida is admitted to the Union
as a slave state, paired with Iowa, which will enter as a free state on
December 28, 1846.

Mar. 4 TNTennessean
James K. Polk is inaugurated as the nation’s 11th President
(1845-1849).

May 3Macon
B. Allen of Massachusetts becomes the first African American lawyer admitted to the bar.

May 8The Baptist movement has worked to
maintain an uneasy peace among its members by simply avoiding discussion of the
topic of slavery.However, when an 1840
American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention brings the issue into the open, the
Mission Board is forced to take a stand. When the Board
refuses to accept Georgia’s nomination of a slave-owner to be sent out as a
missionary, 293 Southern leaders representing 365,000 members, meet in Augusta,
Georgia, and agree regretfully to withdraw. This group will form the
Southern Baptist Convention, which eventually grows to be the largest
Protestant denomination in the country.

May 23Frederick
Douglass publishes his biography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. He is 27 years old.

Dec. 11 TNThe Tennessee
General Assembly charters the Nashville & Chattanooga Railway. BY 1857-58 Chattanooga is a major

railway hub in the South.

Dec. 29Texas
(which has been an
independent country since 1836) is annexed and admitted to the Union as a slave state, based

on the
terms of the Missouri Compromise.Wisconsin’s admission as a free state on May 29, 1848, is seen as the balance
for Texas. Mexico, never having recognized
Texas independence, declares war on the United States.

1846

--- TNApproximate
birth year of Hamilton County Representative William C. Hodge, born in North Carolina.

May 13The U.S. Congress declares war on Mexico.Since Texas
is a slave state, Northerners and Whigs generally oppose the war, while
Southerners and Democrats tend to support it.The U.S. desire to annex California should be considered a major cause
of the war.[Hunt]

---The Wilmot Proviso is amended to a bill providing
for negotiation of a settlement with Mexico.A challenge to pro-slavery groups, the Proviso bans slavery in any of
the territory acquired in the Mexican war.Although the amended bill is passed by the House in 1846 and 1847, the Southern-dominated
Senate blocks it.The effect of the debate
over the Proviso is to intensify the conflict between the North and the South
over slavery. The escalating controversy will lead to Southern secession. The political
debate has shifted subtly from abolitionism to free soil. [Hunt]

1847

July 26The legislature of Liberia declares itself an independent state.Joseph Jenkins Roberts is elected its first president.

---The
Free Soil Movement is organized in the United States
.Supporters of the Wilmot Proviso, its members are

abolitionists who are extremely antagonistic toward the extension of slavery
into the territories.Fairly successful
as a third party, it sends two Senators and 14 Representatives to the 31st
Congress.Its membership includes many
northern Whigs and Democrats who are opposed to slavery.By about 1854 most Free-Soilers have merged
with the Republican party.

Feb. 2The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
ends the Mexican War.Mexico must
yield nearly half of its territory to the U.S. in exchange for
$15,000,000.That territory includes California and the territory of New Mexico, which includes the
present-day Nevada,
Utah, Wyoming, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming, and Colorado.(The 1853 Gadsden Purchase will add the lower portions
of the present-day Arizona and New Mexico.)Congress
begins the battle over slavery in the new territories.

1848

May 10 TNBirth of Fayette
County Representative Monroe
W. Gooden near Somerville, Tennessee, to slave Monroe Gooden Sr. and an
unknown mother.

Sept. 19 TNBirth of Shelby
County Representative Greene E. Evans in Fayette County, Tennessee. His mother is a slave on the

plantation of BoswelL Baker Degraffenreid in the northern part of the county.

1849

Mar. 5Zachary Taylor, a Whig, a cousin
of James Madison, and a hero of the Mexican War, is elected 12th President
of the U.S.

---TNApproximate
birth year of Shelby County Representative Leon Howard.

Autumn xxxxxxKnowing she will be sold after her owner’s
death, Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland. However, she

will
return to the South nineteen times, bringing out more than 300 slaves.

1850

---As Congress
debates the status of slavery in the territory acquired from Mexico, a number
of proposals remain on the table: one is the Wilmot Proviso, which would ban all slavery in that
territory; another is a measure, sanctioned by President Zachary Taylor, to
extend the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific.Senator Stephen A. Douglas is identified with
“Popular Sovereignty,” which eventually emerges as part of the Compromise of
1850.This plan will permit territorial
governments to make their own determinations about slavery.[Hunt]

June 3 TNDelegates from nine Southern states meet in
Nashville to discuss their concerns about Northern attitudes relating to
slavery.The Tennessee General Assembly,
opposed to disunion, refuses to send delegates, but individual counties send
101 delegates to the Nashville Convention (sometimes called the Southern
Convention), thus becoming the largest group from any state to participate.The delegates resist the “Fire-Eaters’”
demands for secession but adopt resolutions “asserting the South’s
constitutional rights in the territories and the rights and interests of Texas
in the boundary dispute.” Although the Convention fails to unite the South, it does
call attention to Southern grievances and almost certainly influences the
passage of the Compromise of 1850.[Goodstein]

July 4Falling ill with gastroenteritis after a 4th of
July celebration, President Zachary Taylor becomes the second President to die
in office.

July 10Millard Fillmore
is inaugurated the nation’s 13th President (1850-1853).

Sept. 9-20President Fillmore
signs the five bills making up the Compromise of 1850, the passage of which is
orchestrated by Stephen Douglas.The
plan will

·force Texas
to relinquish about one-third of its territory in exchange for $10,000,000 from
the U.S. Government;

·organize New
Mexico/Arizona and Utah under the rule of “popular sovereignty,” by which each
territory can choose its own response to slavery.Critics protest that it undermines the
Missouri Compromise;

·admit California to the Union as a free state, despite
the fact that it upsets the 15-15 balance of free and slave states;

·abolish the sale of slaves (although not the
institution of slavery) in the District
of Columbia; and

·enact a harsh new
Fugitive Slave Law that penalizes law enforcement officials for failing to
arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave, and that requires fines and
jail terms for anyone providing food or shelter to runaway slaves.

Nov. TNAlthough the Compromise of 1850 reduces
the Southern passion for establishing regional unity against the North, fifty

delegates from seven southern states meet for a second
Nashville Convention and affirm the right to secede.

1851

June 5Harriet Beecher Stowe sells Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the National Era for $300. Despite the paper's small circulation,

the story is widely read as copies pass from hand to
hand.After the last (40th) installment
(April 1852), it appears in book form, selling half a million copies by 1857.Neither slavery nor the Fugitive Slave Law ever
recovers its legitimacy.

William Dougherty Hutchins, is a free man, who owns his
own Atlanta barbershop.

1853

Mar. 4Franklin Pierce is inaugurated the
nation’s 14th President (1853-1857).

---William Wells Brown publishes Clotel,
the first novel by a black author. The book is published in London while Brown

is still technically a slave.He
will later write The Escape, the first African American play.

Nov. TNNelson G.
Merry, a former slave, becomes the first Tennessee African American to be
ordained and placed over a congregation. He is named moderator (pastor) of the
first Colored Baptist Mission on Pearl Street in Nashville, where he has preached
since 1848.

1854

May 30Congress
passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, introduced by Stephen Douglas, although it has been condemned
by xxxxxxxxxxxxxxFrederick Douglass and others in the anti-slavery movement. By permitting residents of Kansas and Nebrasks to

decide for themselves whether to allow
slavery in their territories,
the bill essentially repeals the 1820 Missouri xxxxxxxxxxxxxxCompromise

(which has permitted slavery north of latitude 36o30’) and opens the Northern
territory to slavery.The xxxxxxxxxxxxxxKansas-Nebraska Act will also corrupthe the westward movement: Americans have come tp believe that the

solutions to many issues (overpopulation, mass production
manufacturing, dreams of
expansion and adventure) lie in the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxWest (which historian

Frederick
Jackson Turner will later describe as “the soul of American democracy"). By this time,

however, the West is dissolving in terrorism (from violent acts by Border Ruffians, John Brown, and others) and

electoral fraud (see 1857 timeline entries on the Lecompton Constitution), and the dream of Jacksonian America is
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxcrumbling. [Hunt]

July 6The
first official Republican party meeting takes place in
Jackson, Mich., impelled by the feeling of betrayal among

Northern and Northwestern
states after the Kansas-Nebraska Act is approved by Congress. Loyal to the precepts of the Missouri
Compromise, it attracts Free-Soilers and others opposed to slavery and becomes powerful nationally when John C. Frémont (“Free
soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Frémont!”) is nominated for President
in 1856. Four years later Abraham Lincoln
will become the first Republican elected to that office.The power of the new party is not so much in
an anti-slavery agenda (the party never moves beyond the idea of preventing
slavery’s expansion into the west) as in its effectiveness in creating a
cross-sectional alliance between New England, the mid-Atlantic
states, and the old Northwest.For the first time in American politics, there is a “politicized
North.”[Hunt]

1855

Feb. 26 TNHumeSchool,
housing 12 teachers and serving all grades, opens in Nashville, one of the first Southern cities to institute
a public school system.(Mobile, Alabama, opened the Barton Academy as a public school in
1836; the North Carolina legislature enacted its first statewide public school
law in 1839.) Blacks, excluded from public schools in Nashville and Memphis,
must organize their own schools or teach basic skills in churches and Sabbath
schools.

NovemberAlthough
Democrat James Buchanan wins the popular Presidential voteand survives the electoral college tally, Republican xxxxxxxxxxxxxxcandidate John C. Frémont
comes within two states of defeating him.It is clear that the Republican
party has become a xxxxxxxxxxxxxxpolitical force to contend
with.

are well-educated and prosperous, tightening
the controls on local African American citizens and forcing free black schools
to close until after the city’s occupation by Union forces in February 1862.

--- TNAfrican
American education in Memphis is likewise shut down when local whites forbid
black residents to learn to read.

1857

Mar. 4James Buchanan is inaugurated the
nation’s 15th President (1857-1861).

MarchThe
Supreme Court rules, in Dred Scott v Sanford,
that an African American cannot be considered a citizen of the

United States and thus has no right to sue or to
claim other rights of citizenship. The decision is a focal point of the
Lincoln-Douglas debates in the 1858 Illinois Senate campaign.Although Lincoln loses the election, his
“house divided” speech and the exposure he receives in the debates catapult him
into national prominence.

Oct. 19A Constitutional
Convention meets in Lecompton, capital city of the Kansas Territory, to draft a
state constitution.Pro-slave delegates
push through the Lecompton Constitution protecting
slavery.

DecemberKansas
voters, in an election marked by violence and fraud, ratify the Lecompton Constitution, as free-staters stay

away from the polls in protest.News reports of the election stir up the
North against the slave system, and many northern Democrats, including Stephen
A. Douglas, break with the party, voting against President Buchanan’s endorsement
of the document and his recommendation to admit Kansas as a slave state.

1858

--- TNApproximate
birth year of Haywood County Representative Samuel A. McElwee, born into slavery in Madison

County.

Jan. 4Kansas voters,
given an opportunity to reconsider the Lecompton Constitutionafter voting irregularities are charged in the
earlier referendum, decisively reject it by a vote of 10,226 to 138!

1859

---The
Clothilde, the last ship to carry slaves to the United States
,
arrives in Mobile Bay, Alabama, with an illegal

shipment of slaves.Its captain, Tim Meaher, has made a bet that
he can sneak in a shipload of slaves under cover of darkness.

--- TNA
group of African Americans in Memphis
establishes the Collins Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church, the first

independent black congregation that is not
organized under the patronage and control of a white church.

July 18 TNBirth of Fayette County Representative David F. Rivers, born in Montgomery, Alabama, to Edmonia Rivers, a free

woman of color, and
an unknown father.

Oct. 16John
Brown and his followers (five of the 13 are African American) attack Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia),

in an attempt to free and arm the local
slaves.Brown
becomes a martyr for abolition.

Oct. 27 TNThe
Louisville & Nashville Railroad line, chartered in 1850, is completed between its two namesake cities, 180 miles

apart. By the
time the Civil War
begins in 1861, the L&N will have laid 269 miles of track. Spanning the Union and xxxxxxxxxxxxxxConfederate lines, it will be of use to both armies. Because of Nashville's early occupation by Union forces, it will

suffer less damage than other railroads and will be positioned to expand quickly after the war.

1860

--- TNSlaves
now constitute one-fourth of Tennessee’s population and about 15% of the national population. Tennessee’s
slaves are valued at $114 million. [Hunt]

---Approximately
300,000 free blacks are living in Southern states, primarily in Virginia, Kentucky, and South Carolina.

primarily
in Virginia, Kentucky, and South Carolina.

--- TNFewer
than 20% of Tennessee
families own (or can afford to own) slaves. Slave owners in the state hold a median of

15.1 slaves.

---In
this year “only five Northern states, all with tiny black populations, [allow] black men to vote on the same terms as

white.”[Foner]

May 16Abraham
Lincoln receives the Republican party’s nomination for President on the third ballot.

NovemberA
four-way party split causes a messy and complicated election: the Democrats have split into two factions,

represented by John C. Breckinridge and Stephen A.
Douglas; the Whig candidate, John Bell, carries
Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia; and Abraham Lincoln represents the
Republicans.Lincoln’s victory is
determined by the electoral college. [Hunt] Although he earns less than 40% of
the popular vote nationwide, he wins 180 electoral votes to Breckenridge’s 72,
Bell’s 39, and Douglas’s 12.The failure
of the political system to hold the country together sets the stage for
inevitable civil conflict.

Dec. 2In his final speech to Congress, President Buchanan
anticipates the impending Southern Secession, arguing that

secession is clearly unconstitutional (as
opposed to the right of revolution), but that a Union of consent cannot rest on
force.In other words, no state has the
right to oppress another state – if a state secedes, the Union is dead. [Hunt]

Dec. 20In a convention called by John C. Calhoun to consider
secession, South Carolina's delegates vote unanimously to

secede from the Union.This
move, foreshadowed by the demands of the Fire-Eaters (led by Edmund Ruffin,
William Yancey, and others) during the Nashville Convention of 1850, has
intensified in the face of growing Southern opposition to Jacksonian politics
and to Northern abolition and feminist movements.But the issue comes to a head with the Lincoln’s
election, which, to the South, represents a complete breakdown of the political
system. [Hunt]

1861

Jan. 29Kansas is admitted to
the Union as a free state.

Feb. 4Seven states secede to form the Confederate States of
America.

Feb 18Jefferson
Davis is inaugurated President of the Confederacy in Montgomery, Alabama, two weeks before Lincoln's

Mar. 11 The Confederate States of America – at this time consisting
of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi,

South Carolina, and Texas – adopts a
Constitution.

Apr. 12Confederate
batteries fire on FortSumter in Charleston, South
Carolina, in the first engagement of the Civil War.

Unified by their response to this attack on their flag, Republicans and
Democrats in the Northern tier of states suddenly form what would previously have
been an unattainable coalition and come together as Unionists, instantly
uniting against this “treason by force.” [Hunt]

Apr. 15Lincoln
issues a call for
75,000 troops to put down the Southern rebellion. Recruitment and military training begin in

earnest, but nobody expects the conflict to last more than a
few months.

and proclaims they can no longer be
returned to their owners. [Foner, Forever
Free]

June 8 TNThe
Tennessee General Assembly votes to secede from the Union, despite evidence
that many Tennesseans (possibly a majority) are opposed to secession.

June 28 TNThe Tennessee General Assembly authorizes a draft of free
black men into the Confederate army. Most free black men

will manage to evade both the Confederate draft and the local sheriffs compelled to enforce it.

Aug. 6Lincoln
signs the First
Confiscation Act, authorizing Union seizure of rebel property and ordering Union officers not to

return escaped or confiscated slaves who are working or fighting for the rebel forces.

1862

Feb. 16 TNGeneral Grant accepts the
surrender of Fort Donelson as Union forcesbreach the Southern defenses and open
a corridor to Nashville.

Feb. 21Nathaniel
Gordon, a slave trader from Maine,
is hanged in New York City for piracy. Harper's Weekly (March 8)

comments, “For
forty years the slave-trade has been pronounced piracy by law, and to engage in it has been a capital

offense. But the sympathy of the Government and its
officials has been so often on the side of the criminal, and it seemed so
absurd to hang a man for doing at sea that which, in half the
Union,
is done daily without censure on land, that no one has ever been punished under
the Act. The Administration of Mr. Lincoln has turned over a new leaf in this
respect. Henceforth the slave-trade will be abandoned to the British and their
friends.”

William Driver, a native of Salem, Massachusetts,
and a proud Union supporter, offers his personal flag, which he calls “Old
Glory,” to be flown from the Capitol.

March TNTennessee
Senator Andrew Johnson is appointed military governor and arrives in Nashville
to head the occupation forces.

Mar.Congress
adopts an article of war forbidding members of the army and navy to return fugitive slaves to their owners.

[Berlin]

Apr. 16The
Confederacy issues a draft order, making all healthy white men between the ages of 18 and 35 liable for a three-

year term of military service.By September the upper age limit will be
raised to 45; by October 11, a man owning 20 or more slaves becomes exempt; by
February 1864, the age range will include men between the ages of17 and 50.

---Congress
abolishes slavery in the District of
Columbia
, compensating loyal owners, and appropriates funds for

“colonization” of freed slaves outside the U.S. [Foner, Forever Free]

June 6 TNMemphis surrenders to Union forces.

July 2 TNTheMorrill Actallocates
federal land or its monetary value to various states for the teaching of
“agricultural and mechanical” subjects and military training to students.After the Civil War Tennessee will designate
East Tennessee University (renamed the University of Tennessee in 1879) as a
land-grant institution.

·The Second
Confiscation Act frees the slaves of owners who are actively engaged in
rebellion and authorizes military commanders to appropriate those former slaves
as military personnel “in any capacity to suppress the rebellion.”

·The Militia Act
authorizes the employment of “persons of African descent” in “any military or
naval service for which they may be found competent,” and grants freedom to
those slaves and their families.In
other words, Lincoln can now use black soldiers in the Union Army.By the end of the war in April 1865,
a reported 180,000 African Americans will have served in the U.S. Army.

Sept. 23Lincoln’s
preliminary publication of the Emancipation Proclamationis released. While it does not immediately free

all slaves, it provides aforewarning to owners that the
rebellion must end by January 1 or the Proclamation will be signed.It takes a surprisingly
conciliatory tone, offering
aid to states that make provisions for gradual emancipation and referring once
again to Congress’s April 16 appropriation for colonizingfreed slaves
somewhere outside the borders of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxthe United States.

Dec. 7 TNWork on FortNegley,
the largest Union fort west of Washington,
D.C.
, is completed. The fort has been constructed

over a
three-month period by Union soldiers and hundreds of black workers – free and
slave – who have been conscripted into service in what is probably the first large-scale use of contraband labor in
Tennessee during the war. With insufficient
food, shelter, and clothing, many of these workers will die; most are never
paid.Regrettably, the construction of
Fort Negley becomes a model for future projects, as Union officers, lacking
laborers, impress black men into service and work them in merciless conditions.
[Hunt]

Dec. 31 TNOn the last day of 1862 Union General William S.
Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland challenges General

control and
authorizes the enlistment of black soldiers.It is important to recognize that it does not outlaw slavery in all
areas of the country.Tennessee, which is
under Union control (and whose constitution will be among the first to ban slavery);
Southern Louisiana, which has remained loyal to the Union; and the border
states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri are exempt from the
Emancipation Proclamation, even though slavery exists in its cruelest forms in
all six states.[See September 5, 1864]

Jan. 2The
Battle of Stones River ends.With 23,000
casualties, it is the second bloodiest battle fought west of the

Appalachians during the Civil War with the highest percentage of casualties on both sides. Rosecrans' repulse of two

Confederate attacks and the subsequent
Confederate withdrawal as Union
reinforcements arrive goes a long way toward xxxxxxxrestoring Union morale:Lincoln later writes: "I
can never forget you gave us a hard-earned
victory, which had there been xxxxxxxa defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over."

Mar. 3The Conscription Act/Enrollment Act
is passed, requiring enrollment of all able-bodied men in the Union Army,

although they can purchase their exemption
by paying $300 or by sending a substitute.Only 46,347 of the 776,892 men receiving
draft notices will actually don a uniform. [Lapham]

MayAuthority is granted for the
formation of a U.S. Bureau of Colored Troops.Andrew Johnson, military governor of the occupation forces, drags his
feet about initiating the troops, feeling, among other things, that contraband
labor is too essential to pillage for soldiers. [Hunt]

June 20West Virginia separates itself from
Virginia to become a new Unionist state.Its constitution bans the introduction of slaves into the state but does
not address the issue of emancipating the slaves already there.

Summer TNNashville has
become a surprisingly dynamic city: it provides medical care, maintenance, and
supplies for the war effort and the railroads; it attracts refugees, both black
and white (including multitudes fleeing Confederate occupation in East
Tennessee, and a huge number of contraband workers and their families); and it supplies
food, rest, and recreation for military personnel, including “a licensed and
medically regulated prostitution district.”[Hunt]

July 4The
Confederacy is reeling from three major losses: battles at Tullahoma, Vicksburg, and Gettysburg have taken a huge

toll on Southern forces. Many people mistakenly assume the war is nearly over. However, the South is more resilient

and the
Union
less sound than people assume.

July 11-13A
week after the Battle of Gettysburg, opposition to the draft and its “rich man's exemptions" sparks a riot in New

the men in
the regiment are killed, wounded, or captured.Sgt. William H. Carney will become the first African American to receive
the Congressional Medal of Honor for courage under fire.

July 30Confederate
President Davis announces that black soldiers of the USCT will be treated as escaped slaves and returned

to their
owners.Lincoln
’s response is immediate and harsh; captured USCT soldiers are to be treated as prisoners of

war, and not as escaped slaves. [Foner, Forever Free]

Sept. 10 TNThe Bureau of U.S. Colored
Troops opens in Nashville
.More than 20,000 of the 180,000 USCT will be from

Tennessee, and the state will see more than 5,000 casualties.
George Luther Stearns, Assistant Adjutant General for the Recruitment of
Colored Troops, is put in charge of recruiting in Tennessee.A fervent abolitionist, Stearns, John Brown’s
largest financial backer, even owned the rifles Brown used at Harper’s Ferry.He recruited the Union’s first African
American regiment, the 54th Massachusetts, and will later be a
leader in establishing the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Nov. 19Lincoln delivers the
Gettysburg Address.

Dec. 2The statue “Freedom” is placed on top of the U.S. Capitol. Sculptor
Philip Reid was a slave in a Maryland foundry when

pledge
loyalty to the Union and
agree to accept emancipation.A state can begin
the process of rejoining the Union as soon as 10% of a Confederate state’s voters make the pledge. This
fairly loose oath, pledging Union loyalty from the moment
the oath is taken, angers black leaders, Southern Unionists, and Congressional
Republicans. Lincoln seems xxxxxxxxxxxxxxmore interested in disrupting the Confederacy than
actually implementing Reconstruction. [Hunt]

1864

---The black Baptists of the
West and South organize the Northwestern Baptist Convention and the Southern
Baptist Convention.In 1866 they will
merge with the American Baptist Convention to form the Consolidated Baptist
Convention, which will support the efforts of black Baptists in several
Southern states to form their own conventions.

JanuaryRadical Republicans are hostile to Lincoln’s policies,
fearing that they do not provide sufficient protection for ex-slaves, that the
10% amnesty plan is not strict enough, and that Southern states should demonstrate
more significant efforts to eradicate the slave system before being allowed
back into the Union. Consequently, Congress
refuses to recognize the govern-ments of Southern states, or to seat their elected
representatives. Instead, legislators begin to work on their own Reconstruction
plan, which will emerge in July as the Wade-Davis Bill. Congress now understands the Confederacy
to be the face of a deeply rooted cultural system antagonistic to the
principles of a “free labor” society.Many
fear that returning home rule to such a system amounts to accepting secession
state by state and opening the door for such malicious local legislation as the
Black Codes that eventually emerge.

Mar. 1Rebecca Lee Crumpler becomes the
first black woman to receive a medical degree, graduating from the New EnglandFemaleMedicalCollege.Following the Civil War she will work with
the Freedmen’s Bureau providing medical assistance to former slaves.Her Book of Medical Discourses,
published in 1883, is one of the earliest medical publications by any African
American.

March TNMilitary Governor Andrew
Johnson, speaking at the dedication of the Northwestern Military Railroad at Johnsonville,

urges Unionists to “go to the ballot box”
and vote slavery out of the state. The
railroad, strategic to the success of the Union army’s attack on Atlanta, has
been built by thousands of black contraband workers and U.S. Colored
Troops.

June 15Congress
passes a bill authorizing equal pay, equipment, arms, and health care for African American troops in the

Union Army.

JulyCongress
passes the Wade-Davis Bill, which requires a majority vote of state voters to gain readmission to the

Union, restricts many former Confederates
from political participation in Reconstruction, and demands that blacks receive
not only their freedom but also equality before the law; Lincoln’s July 4 pocket
veto of the bill kills it.

Sept. 2Sherman
takes Atlanta. That victory will give an
enormous boost to Lincoln's Presidential hopes, which have been

damaged by the length of the war and the
sense of stalemate the country now feels.

Sept. 5The new Louisiana constitution abolishes slavery; Maryland,
Missouri, and Tennessee will do the same in the next

few months.Note that these are four of the six states
that were exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation.[See January 1, 1863.]

Autumn TNTennessee
’s
black leaders organize a torchlight parade to honor Military Governor Andrew Johnson and to petition for

approximately one-third of all black soldiers enrolled in the military will lose their lives in the Civil War.

--- TNFour
Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company Bank branches will operate in Tennessee
(in Chattanooga, Columbia, Memphis, and Nashville) between 1865 and 1874.A
significant resource for the black community, the bank will fail in 1874 following the economic depression of the 1870s, largely
through mismanagement and fraud by the white managers of an important
Washington, D.C. branch.

Jan. TNWilliam Scott begins
publication of The Colored Tennessean, the first black newspaper in Nashville.

Jan. 2 TNJohn Mercer Langston, founder and dean
of the Howard University Law School, speaks at Nashville's second annual

Emancipation Day celebration.

Jan. TNThe Tennessee General Assembly amends
the state constitution to prohibit slavery; voters will ratify the amendment in

March.

Jan. 9 TNFisk Free Colored School opens in the
buildings of a former U. S. Army hospital. Tennessee Governor W. G.

“Parson” Brownlow
advises students to be “mild and temperate” in their behavior toward white
people, and warns teachers to be “exceedingly prudent and cautious.”The school will number 600 students by
February and will continue to expand for some time.

Jan. 16Under
Union Gen. Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, 40-acre plots of land are set aside in coastal South Carolina,

Georgia, and Florida for the exclusive use of freed blacks, who
can claim “possessory title” with option to purchase.Sherman’s
primary motive is to get rid of the multitudes of refugees following his army –
not only are they impeding his military operations, but they are also consuming
rations he needs for his troops. [Hunt]

Jan. 31U.S.
Congress approves the abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude, sending the 13th Amendment to the states

for ratification.

Feb. 1J.
S. Rock, who will be the first black lawyer to practice in the Supreme Court, is admitted to the bar of the Supreme

Court.

---General
Sherman’s army turns north toward the Carolinas and Virginia.

Feb. 8Martin
Robinson Delany, a writer, publisher, and physician, becomes the first African American to receive a regular

army commission when President Lincoln
promotes him to the rank of major in the U. S. Army.

Mar. 3A
joint resolution of Congress frees the wives and children of soldiers, regardless of their owners' loyalty, [Berlin]

---The
U.S. Congress establishes the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (to be known as the

Freedmen’s Bureau); its function is to ease the transition
from slavery, offering shelter, medical care, legal services, and educational
facilities to former slaves.Authorized to function for only one year, the bureau will operate until
1868.

Mar. 4 TNAbraham Lincoln is
inaugurated for a second term, with Tennessean Andrew Johnson as Vice President. Lincoln

pledges “malice toward none and
charity for all.”

Mar. 13 TNThe Confederate States Congress authorizes
the recruitment of black soldiers -- slave or free -- to serve in the

Confederate Army; however, this uncharacteristic move by the Confederate Congress comes too late to prepare any

black troops for battle. Some scholars
believe that as many as 65,000 African Americans may have served the
Confederate Army in some fashion: the Confederacy impressed and leased slaves
extensively to work on fortifications and other projects; individual slaves sometimes
accompanied their masters (usually officers) into war as personal servants; and
a few (perhaps including Tennessee legislator Sampson W. Keeble) actually fought, generally to protect their own
farms or neighborhoods.

Mar. 26 TNTennessee voters ratify
the new state constitution, which includes an anti-slavery amendment.

owners (anyone with taxable property over
$20,000) and former Confederate military leaders until their individual
petitions for amnesty are approved; the federal government also now requires
all states to ratify the 13th Amendment.The most surprising edict among the otherwise
strict requirements is that only 10% of the voting population of any Southern
state must take a loyalty oath in order for readmission to the Union. Johnson also intends that each state
convention declare secession null and void and repudiate the debt each
Confederate state has acquired in the war.Unfortunately, the state conventions and leadership will openly defy or
circumvent him, thus cutting off their best ally in Washington, since Johnson might
have been a useful mediator between the former Confederate states and the
congressional Republicans.As a Democrat
in a Republican administration that has no respect for him, he is ineffectual
against the political realities of 1865-66, even though he has proved himself
an anti-secessionist and a convert to the cause of emancipation in Tennessee. [Hunt]

JuneSouthern
white men excluded from the general amnesty may begin their appeals for individual pardons on this date.

June 19“Juneteenth,”
the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery -- word of Emancipation finally reaches

slaves in isolated areas of Texas.

AugustSouthern
states open Constitutional Conventions to renounce secession, disavow the Southern debt, and ratify the

Aug. TNThe first
State Colored Men’s Convention meets at St. John’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in Nashville.

Delegates call for the final ratificationof the 13the Amendment, as well as full citizenship and black
suffrage.There is no apposite response
from the Tennessee General Assembly.

Aug. TNNight riders expand
their terrorist activities throughout Tennessee, causing General George H. Thomas to increase the

Union presence in the
state.

SeptemberPresident
Johnson demonstrates a greater tendency to align himself with white Southern land owners, declaring "white

men alone must manage theSouth.”He issues a controversial order to return appropriated land to its
former owners, even lands granted to freedmen by Sherman’s January 16 Field
Order No. 15. Because many freedmen have already settled in
and begun farming the land, some are stubbornly resistant to leaving.

OctoberSouthern
states put local, state, and congressional elections in process, anticipating full restoration to the Union as soon

as they comply with
Johnson’s order

Nov. 25Issuance
of Mississippi’s first “Black Codes.”Other states also pass laws imposing restrictions on black citizens:

freedmen can work only as field hands;
unemployed black men can be auctioned to planters as laborers; black children
can be taken from their families and made to work; blacks refusing to sign
labor contracts can be penalized; strict laws control vagrancy, apprenticeship,
and public transportation.In addition, blacks are forbidden to testify against whites

in court, and they cannot serve on
juries, bear arms, or hold large meetings.

DecemberUlysses
S. Grant makes a victory tour of an unexpectedly friendly South and recommends lenient Reconstruction

policies.

Dec. 4The
U.S. Senate and House form a Joint Committee on Reconstruction. More than sixty newly-elected Senators and

Representatives from Southern states (all but
Mississippi have consented to the presidential requirements for readmission to
the Union) are denied their seats in the 39thCongress when the Clerk refuses to
include their names in the roll call.

WinterNashville, Memphis, and other Southern
cities begin to experience an influx of freedmen from rural areas that will
double the black population of the South’s ten largest cities within five
years.

1866

--- TNNashville
Normal and Theological Institute opens under the
guidance of the American Baptist Home Mission Society.

(Its predecessor, the “Baptist College,” originally a seminary for
African American preachers, began in a private home in 1864.)The school is renamed Roger Williams
University in 1883.Its major buildings will
be destroyed by fires of suspicious origin in 1905.

Jan. 1By the beginning of 1866 President Johnson has issued
individual pardond to more than 7,000 Southern men denied

amnesty under the $20,000 property clause.

Feb. 2An African American delegation led
by Frederick Douglass meets with President Johnson to advocate black suffrage.Johnson says he will continue to support the
interests of Southern whites and vows to oppose black voting rights.

Mar. 27President
Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Civil Rights Bill is designed to put an end to the

Black Codes, which will survive in spite of Congressional
efforts and will create a deliberately unequal application of civil law.

Apr. 9By
overwhelming majorities, both houses of Congress overturn Johnson’s vetoes of both
the Freedmen’s Bureau bill and the Civil Rights Act (which prohibits state governments from
discrimination on the basis of race).These are the first major bills to supersede a Presidential veto; the
rift between Congress and the President deepens.

Apr. 16Virginia
Freedmen parading to celebrate the Civil Rights Act are attacked by whites; five people die in the ensuing

race riot.

May 1-3 TNA
race riot in Memphis results in 48 deaths, five rapes, many injuries, and the destruction of 90 black homes, 12

schools, and four churches.

May 26 TNThe Tennessee General
Assembly passes legislation giving persons of color the right to make contracts, to sue, to

inherit property, and to have equal
benefits with whites under the laws and regarding protection of life and
property.

June TNThe
Ku Klux Klan is founded in Pulaski, TN, by a group of Confederate veterans.

June 13Congress approves the 14th
Amendmentand sends it to the states for
ratification.The moderate Republican
response to the Black Codes and to Johnson’s failure to make
self-Reconstruction work, it becomes the core of moderate Congressional
Reconstruction.It characterizes
citizenship as the entitlement of all people born or naturalized in the United
States and increases federal power over the states to protect individual rights,
while the daily affairs of the states are left in their own hands.Unpopular with the Congressional Radicals, this
amendment will require more than two years to be ratified by the states.

JulyCongress
again overrides a Presidential veto to pass the supplemental Freedmen's Bureau Bill.

July 2 TNGovernor (“Parson”) Brownlow,
a slave-owner but also a dedicated Unionist, moves to return Tennessee to the Union.

July 19 TNTennessee, recognizing
that the14th Amendment gives the states broader autonomy to manage Constitutionsl issues

than they expected, becomes the third
state – and the first former Confederate state – to ratify the amendment.

July 24 TNTennessee is the first
former Confederate state readmitted to the Union.

Thus the state will be
exempt from the intensifying conflict between Congress and other former Confederate
states.

July 30A
mob of whites attacks a black suffrage meeting in New Orleans; 38 die, 150 are injured.

Johnson’s undignified and spiteful responses to the hostile crowds cost him the support of many Northerners, as well

as the
respect of Grant.

Aug. 6 TNThe second
Tennessee State Colored Men’s Convention meets in Nashville to advocate black suffrage and to

organize
demonstrations at the General Assembly.Leaders of the
movement include Sampson W.
Keeble, Nelson G. Merry, Samuel
and Peter Lowery, and others.

NovemberRepublicans take more than a 2/3 majority
in Congressional elections; they are now guaranteed to override any
Presidential vetoes in the coming legislative session.

Dec. 6President Johnson announces to
Congress that the Union has been restored.

--- TNMost of
the 356,000 acres confiscated from white Confederate loyalists in Tennessee are
returned after 1866.Most former slaves are
no more than gang laborers or, at best, share-croppers, working white farms for
shares of produce or extremely low wages.Only about 400 black Tennessee farmers own their own land by the end of
this year.In Wilson County, for
example, blacks own only 30 of the 10,997 acres of farmland.

1867

Jan. 8Overriding
President Johnson’s veto, Congress grants the black citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote.

Feb. 25 TNThe Tennessee General
Assembly grants African Americans the right to vote and to hold political office; Governor

Brownlow signs the bill into law the
following day.

Mar. TNTennessee’s African
American leaders hold their first political meetings to organize the black vote. By the end of 1867

around 40,000 African American men will have registered to vote.

Mar. TNThe
Tennessee General Assembly passes an act to reorganize public schools in the
state, with provisions for black and white children to be taught in separate
schools. The act reestablishes the office of state superintendent of education,
and specifies funding and county supervision of the system.

who have refused to ratify the 14th
Amendment, passes four Military Reconstruction Acts dividing the South into
five military districts – existing state and local governments are placed under
authority of military commanders until they meet and adopt new state constitutions,
ratify the 14th Amendment, and permit black adult males to participate
in the process for the first time. [Hunt]

Mar. 2Howard
University is officially incorporated by Congress.Named for Major General Oliver O. Howard,
Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, it is originally conceived as a
theological seminary for freedmen, then incorporated
as a liberal arts college, primarily for the training of black teachers and
preachers, but open to men and women of all races.It is the third university established in
Washington, D.C., after Georgetown University (1789) and George Washington University
(1821).

·Third:
To aid & assist in the execution of all constitutional laws, & to
protect the people from unlawful seizure, & from trial except by their
peers in conformity with the laws of the land.

May TNInduction
of Nathan Bedford Forrestinto the KKK and his subsequent election as Grand Wizard of the Klan.

June TNThe KKK holds its first anniversary
parade in Pulaski, Tennessee.

Aug. TNTennessee holds the
South’s first statewide elections to include black voters, electing Republicans in nearly all

positions –
governor, congressional seats, and most state
legislative posts.

AugustPresident Johnson attempts
unsuccessfully to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, triggering a deeper
conflict with Congress and causing a final breach with Ulysses S. Grant.

Aug. 22 TNFiskUniversity
is founded – the first black college in Tennessee
.[Note: there will be no African American students

at Vanderbilt University until Joseph A.
Johnson is admitted to the Divinity School in 1953.]

Sept. TNBlack
Nashvillians vote for the first time in city elections, electing two black councilmen; one of the two is not seated,

and a white councilman is appointed
to the seat.

Sept. TNCentralTennesseeCollege is chartered in Nashville
.Its roots are in a school for freedmen,
sponsored by northern Methodist Episcopal missionaries, which opened in the last year of the Civil War. In 1876 Meharry Medical School

will become part
of
CentralTennesseeCollege.In the 1880s the school will add the
departments of law, industrial art, dentistry, and pharmacy.In 1900 the school will change its name to WaldenUniversity.Meharry will become a separate institution in
1915.

OctoberVoter
registration is completed in the ten Southern states subject to the Reconstruction Acts.

NovemberDiminishing Republican strength in the
Northern states convinces the party to win the South over before the next
Presidential election.The party
platform is set up to include equality for African Americans.

--- TNThomas A. Sykesis elected to the first of five one-year terms in the North
Carolina legislature, serving from 1868-1871.

Dec. 10 TNTennesseeManualLaborUniversity
, modeled after
Tolbert Fanning’s Franklin College, is established on the

Murfreesboro Road near
Nashville by leaders of the Colored Agricultural and Mechanical Association.Its annual fair each fall serves to build a
strong voting base among area freedmen and brings to Nashville such nationally
important black political leaders as Frederick Douglass and John Mercer
Langston.

1868

---Every legislator pictured in
a photograph of the 1868 Louisiana State Legislature is black.

Jan.-Feb.Southern lawmakers, both black
and white, begin to work together in the constitutional conventions, the first
political meetings in U.S.
history to include significant numbers of black men.

AprilHampton Normal &
Agricultural Institute opens in Hampton, Virginia. Like Fisk, Hampton is supported by the American
Missionary Association and serves as a major training ground for thousands of
African American teachers.

May 16Andrew Johnson is the first
President to be impeached by a house of Congress; he avoids conviction and
retains his office after being acquitted in the Senate by a single vote on May
26.

May 20James J. Harris and P. B. S.
Pinchback are the first African American delegates to a Republican National
Convention.They support the nomination
of U. S. Grant for President.Grant is
nominated unopposed on the first ballot.

June 13Oscar
J. Dunn, a former slave, is elected lieutenant governor of Louisiana.

June 22Arkansas is the 2nd state
readmitted to the Union, 2 years after Tennessee.

June 25Florida,
Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina rejoin the Union.

July 4 TNKu Klux Klan members make a public show of
their organization’s strength with parades and confrontations throughout Tennessee.

July 9Rev. Francis L. Cardozo
(1837-1903) is elected Secretary of State in South Carolina, the first black cabinet
member.In 1865 Cardozo, who was
educated in Scotland and New England, founded the Avery Institute ofCharleston, the
first secondary school for black children.

July 14Alabama is readmitted to the Union.

July 27 TNGovernor
Brownlow calls the TN Legislature into special session to demand that any further Ku Klux Klan activity be

punished with death.

July 28 TNTheFourteenth
Amendment is finally
ratified by enough states to become law.[Tennessee, July 1866, was the third state to
ratify.]

Aug. 28 TNNathan
Bedford Forrest, who claims 40,000 KKK members in Tennessee and a total of 550,000 that he can

mobilize within a matter of days, insists the Klan is not motivated by racial
hatred but threatens only “radicals” – carpetbaggers, spies, and “scalawags.”

SeptemberThe
Georgia State Legislature expels its newly elected black legislators. The Atlanta Constitution supports the move,

saying, “The Negro is unfit to rule the
State.”President Grant immediately
imposes military rule on the state, but it will be a full year before the
legislators are readmitted.

Sept. TNBetween
1868 and 1870, Greene
E Evans is admitted to Fisk University, where he pays his way by hauling gravel,

laying sod, and
teaching school in
the summertime in a schoolhouse he built himself. [Marsh]

Sept. TNFive African
Americans are elected to the Nashville
city council.

Sept. 10
TNTennessee
enacts an “anti-Klan” law with penalties for “prowling” by night, in or out of
disguise, “for the purpose of disturbing the peace, or alarming the peaceable
citizens”; for advising resistance to the law; or for threatening or
intimidating a voter.Tennessee’s new militia law authorizes the
governor to send the state guard into any county where at least 10 “Union men”
pledge that the law cannot be enforced or citizens protected without military
assistance.

Sept. 11
TNPresident Johnson meets with a group of TN
legislators, who assure him that the new militia law will be used only in
extreme circumstances, or when federal troops are unavailable.

Sept. 16
TNGovernor
Brownlow issues a call for militia companies to form throughout the state and
assemble in Nashville.

Sept. 28The
Opelousas Massacre in Louisiana results in the death of 200-300 blacks at the hands of violent whites, many of

them Confederate veterans and prominent citizens.

Nov. 3 TNU. S. Grant is elected President.Southern black men, voting in their first
national election, cast 700,000 votes for the Republican ticket.Many of the less wealthy white voters also
vote Republican, reflecting the growing class conflict between poor farmers and
wealthy plantation owners.East
Tennessee, a stronghold of Unionism during the war, is already strongly
Republican; the high Republican vote in West Tennessee, where most black voters
live, reflects a combination of black & white voting power.

1869

---TNTennessee
is the first state to replace a bi-racial Republican state government with an
all-white Democratic government, followed by Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia in 1870.DeWitt Senter ensures his victory in the
governor’s race by advocating the registration of ex-Confederate voters.

---Massachusetts elects two
African Americans to its State House of Representatives: Edward G. Walker and
Charles L. Mitchell become the first African Americans to serve in a
legislative assembly.

Winter TNThe Freedmen’s Bureau reports that there are
now nearly 3,000 schools in the South, serving over 150,000 black students. [Integration of schools will come much more slowly: it is not until May 1957 that Bobby Cain, a student

at Clinton High School, Clinton, Anderson
County, Tennessee, will become the first African American to graduate from a
state-supported integrated public high school in the South.]

Feb. 26Congress approves the 15th
Amendment, stating that
“race, color, or previous condition of servitude” will not be used to bar U.S.
male citizens from voting; theysend it to the states for
ratification.

Feb. 27John W. Menard, elected as a
Republican from Louisiana to the House or Representatives, is barred from his
seat by white Congressmen and pleads his case to be seated, becoming the first
African American representative to speak on the floor of the House.Congress still refuses to seat Menard.

Mar. 4U.S. Grant is inaugurated the
nation’s eighteenth President (1869-1877).

---By the end of the 41stU.S. Congress, two African
Americans will have been seated: Robert Brown Elliott and Joseph

H. Rainey, both of South Carolina.

--- TNFollowing a private meeting with
President Grant, Nathan Bedford Forrestissues a document
disbanding the Ku Klux Klan, stating that it is "being perverted from its
original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of
subservient to the public peace."Forrest’s actions may be motivated, at least in part, by hopes of
avoiding punish-ment for the illegal activities of an organization that is
largely out of control.The Klan has
been extremely violent for years under his leadership, and he disbands it only when
it comes under intense criticism (and when its work is essentially done — many
blacks and Republicans have already been frightened away from the polls).Whatever Forrest’s motives, Klan violence
most assuredly does not end with his declaration.

Apr. 6President Grant appoints Ebenezer
Don Carlos Bassett minister to Haiti.Bassett is the first black American diplomat
and the first black American Presidential appointment.For many years thereafter, both Democratic
and Republican administrations will appoint African Americans as ministers to both
Haiti
and Liberia.

May 10The first
rail line to cross the continent is completed.The railroad network that will now develop is the major factor in the
emergence of a new industrial age, which will dramatically change the nation’s
labor and employment patterns.

Sept. 11
TNAfrican
American city councilman Randal Brown urges Nashville blacks to join the Black
Exodus and homestead movement westward; other leaders express concern about the
Chinese laborers being brought in to replace black workers.

OctoberAs brutal attacks on African
Americans continue throughout the South, Georgia legislator Abram Colby, the
black son of a white planter, is kidnapped and whipped by the Klan.Although his back is permanently injured and
he loses the use of his left hand, he returns to the legislature and continues
to campaign against Klan violence.

Nov. 16 TNTennessee rejects the 15th
Amendment, and does not join other statesin post-ratifying it until 1997.It will be the last state to ratify.

1870

---The 1870 Census shows that
African Americans make up 12.7% of the U.S. population (4,880,009 of
39,818,449).

--- TNAlthough blacks comprise one-third
of Middle Tennessee’s population, only six percent of black families own their
own land.In West
Tennessee, where African Americans are 40% of the population, most
are laborers or sharecroppers.

---Most of the black
members remaining in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, leave (with the
denomination's blessing) to form the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church
(today’s Christian Methodist Episcopal Church).

--- TNDue to the political skills of
African American leader Edward Shaw, who holds the post of wharf master in
Memphis, Shelby County elects as many as six black city councilmen during the
1870s and 1880s.

--- TNA series of
yellow fever epidemics will devastate Memphis for the next decade, killing hundreds of people, and even

causing the State of Tennessee to revoke the
city’s charter in 1879 because of the collapse of the city’s financial base.

--- TNA large number of convicts are
leased from the main prison in Nashville to three separate railroad companies in

Tennessee.

Jan. 10Grant proposes a treaty to annex
what is now the Dominican Republic in an effort to find land where freed slaves can

settle.The Senate Foreign Relations committee opposes the plan, and the treaty
is never approved.

Jan. 10 TNThe Tennessee Constitutional Convention
begins.

Jan. 26Virginia is readmitted to the Union.

Feb. 3Jasper J. Wright, an African
American judge, is elected to the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Feb. 17 TNThe 15th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified by 29 of
the 37 states, guaranteeing the right of African American

Feb. 25Hiram Revels, a Republican from
Mississippi, is sworn in as the first black member of the United States
Senate.Ironically, Revels is elected to
fill the position vacated by Jefferson Davis nearly 10 years earlier.Revels serves only through March 4, 1871, the remainder of
Davis’s vacated term.

Mar. 17North Carolina Governor Holden sends
for federal troops to help control the Ku Klux Klan.Public backlash will cost him the next
election.

Mar. 30Texas is readmitted to the Union.

May 31President Grant signs the First
Enforcement Act. These “Force
Acts” make the bribing, intimidation, or racial discrimination of votersfederal
crimes.They also authorize the use of
federal troops against the KKK, outlawing conspiracies to prevent the exercise
of constitutional rights.Three such
laws are passed between May 1870 and April 1871.All are declared unconstitutional in United
States v. Cruikshank (1876)

July 15Georgia is readmitted to the Union
– the last of the Confederacy to return.

Dec. 12Joseph
Hayne Rainey, born a slave in 1832, is sworn in to fill an unexpired term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A South Carolina Republican, he will be re-elected four
times, serving until 1879, thus becoming
the longest-serving xxxxxxxxxxxxxxblack Congressman until the 1950s.

1871

---The
General Assembly establishes branch penitentiaries in the East Tennessee coal
fields and begins the practice of leasing prisoners to work in the mines.By 1884 the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railway
Company has taken complete control and leases the entire prison population.

Mar. 4During the
42nd U.S. Congress, there are five black members in the House of Representatives: Benjamin S. Turner of

Alabama; Josiah T. Walls of Florida; and
Robert Brown Elliot, Joseph H. Rainey, and Robert Carlos DeLarge of South
Carolina.

Autumn TNLeMoyneCollege (later to be called LeMoyne-OwenCollege
) opens in Memphis with nearly 300 students and three

active departments: normal, commercial, and
music.

Oct. 6 TNThe
Fisk Jubilee Singers leave Nashville on their first American concert tour to raise money for the college. Among

the
eleven students on the tour is baritone Greene Evans,
who will be elected to the General Assembly ten years later.DirectorGeorge White has planned
a route in keeping with the Underground Railroad: over the next eighteen
months, beginning in Cincinnati, the group will visit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New
York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington,
D.C., giving hundreds of performances, and raising $40,000 for Fisk
University.Although the Singers perform
many types of music, it is their performance of Negro spirituals that awakens
an interest in this genre of music and becomes the distinctive signature of the
group.

Oct. 12Congress
listens to testimony from victims of Klan violence in the South. Grant takes action: having ordered the Ku

Klux Klan in SC to disperse and surrender arms,
he quickly sends in federal troops to suppress the Klan.

Oct. 17The last of a series of anti-Klan enforcement acts is passed, providing protection to African Americans voting in

federal elections.Nonetheless, both black and poor white voters
will increasingly be kept from voting by locally enforced poll taxes as well as
literacy tests and property ownership requirements.However,
blacks do represent a considerable voting force in the South for some time,
sometimes combining with various groups of “populist” white voting blocs.
African American political disfranchisement will not be complete until after
the enactment of the Mississippi state constitution in 1890.

Jan. 6 TNSamson W. Keebletakes his
seat as the first African American member of
the Tennessee State Legislature in the 38thxxxxxxxxxxxxxxGeneral Assembly, 1873-1875. He is appointed to the committees on Immigration, Military Affairs, and Tippling

and Tippling Houses, and is later added to the committee on Charitable
Institutions.He introduces three bills,
none of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxthem successful, and
frequently speaks in favor of protecting the wages of laborers.

WinterThe
New York Tribune publishes a series of articles accusing black lawmakers in South Carolina of corruption.

first reading but does not receive a
second – the legislature adjourns one week later.

Apr. 13The Colfax Massacre—a paramilitary group known as the White League, part of a "shadow government" in Louisiana

(and similar in many respects to the Ku Klux
Klan), clashes with the state militia, which is largely black.Three members of the White League die in the
attack, but about 100 black men are killed, nearly half of them slaughtered in
cold blood after their surrender.Similar
incidents occur about the same time in Coushatta and New Orleans.President Grant sends federal troops to
restore order.

---TNFrederick
Douglass, speaking in Nashville, urges black Tennesseans to stay and fight for racial justice rather than to

join the Black Exodus west.

Sept. 18The Panic of 1873 plunges the nation
into a depression.

1874

---Democrats
control both Houses of Congress for the first time since before the Civil War.

June 29The Freedmen’s Bank closes.Originally created to provide a safe place
for black soldiers to deposit their pay, the bank rapidly becomes the financial
base of many in the African American community, devastating them when it closes.Contrary to what depositors have been led to
believe, the bank’s assets are not protected by the federal government.In spite of desperate attempts to revive the
bank (Frederick Douglass pours thousands of dollars of his own money into an
effort to save it), half the depositors will eventually get back only about 60%
of their money; others receive nothing.Some depositors and their descendants spend as many as thirty years petitioning
Congress for reparation.

FallAs
the fall elections approach, reports of Southern violence, political corruption, and economic depression give a

considerable advantage to the Democrats, who
will take control of Congress when it convenes in 1875.

1875

---TNKnoxville College opens during this year as a normal
school sponsored by the United Presbyterian Church of North

America.Designated a college in 1877, it offers
teacher training; college courses in classics, science, and theology; classes
in agriculture, industrial arts, and medicine.Because, in these early years, so few blacks are prepared for higher
education, the college initially offers classes from first grade through
college level.The elementary department
will be discontinued in 1926 and the academy (high school) in 1931.

Jan. 26 Andrew Johnson is elected to the U.S. Senate as a
Democrat from Tennessee.

Mar. 1The Forty-Fourth Congress, which
has six black members and is still under the control of the Republicans, passes
the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which outlaws racial segregation in public facilities and housing
and prevents the exclusion of African Americans from jury service.(Not enforced in the South,
the law will be struck down by the Supreme Court in 1883.)

Mar. 5Blanche
Kelso Bruce takes his seat as the United States Senator from Mississippi. He will be the first African American

places of entertainment.The Bill receives Senate approval before the
end of the month and is signed into law (Chapter 130).

Mar. 23 TNChapter
90 of the Acts of
Tennessee 1875 orders the establishment of a state normal school or schools,
the creation of a State Board of Education, and the requirement that separate
schools “for white and colored pupils” should be established.

May 5 TNThe Fisk
Jubilee Singers return to the U.S., having raised $50,000 for the University
during a year-long British tour.

July 5 TNAfrican
American preacher Hezekiah Hanley holds a celebration of racial unity in Memphis. Among the invited guests

are Nathan Bedford Forrest and other former Confederate generals.

July 31 TNAndrew Johnson dies of a stroke and is
buried in Greeneville, Tennessee.

Dec. 1 TNThe Inaugural Exercises of the State Normal College, known
as “The Peabody State Normal School of the

University of Nashville,” are
held in the House of Representatives.This particular institution accepts white students only.

1876

--- TNStyles L. Hutchinsgraduates from University of South Carolina Law
School and is admitted to the South Carolina bar.

--- TNWilliam
F. Yardley, a Knoxville politician, becomes the first African American to
campaign for governor of Tennessee.

Apr. 5 TNThe Colored National Convention meets in
the House Chamber of the Tennessee General Assembly. Eighteen states and the
District of Columbia are represented. Tennessee delegates are W. Sumner, Abram
Smith, Edward Shaw, and James C. Napier. Former Louisiana Governor Pinckney
Benton Stewart Pinchback and Senator H.S. Smith of Alabama deliver speeches
considered the “high point of the convention.” The Convention’s efforts to
choose and endorse a Presidential candidate are unsuccessful, although Edward
Shaw, Memphis wharf master, speaks out strongly against the Grant
administration.[Walker]

Oct. 13 TNMeharry Medical
College, the first American college for the training of African American
physicians, opens in Nashville. The Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist
Episcopal Church helps establish Meharry as a department of Central Tennessee
College.

Nov. 7Edward Bouchet becomes the first
African American to receive a Ph.D. from an American institution (Yale
University).

---By
this year about 2,000 African American men have held/are holding public office, "ranging from member of

Congress to justice of the peace.”In spite of prohibitions against educating
slaves, “83 percent of the black officials [are] able to read and write.”Twelve percent of them are lawyersor school teachers. [Foner]

--- TNFrom an African American prison
population of 33 percent at the main prison in Nashville, the number has now risen to

67%.Other Southern states also have predominantly black prison populations, far out of proportion to the percentage

of blacks in the general population.

--- TNSampson W. Keebleis elected a magistrate in Davidson County. He will servie until 1882.

Jan. 24Congress
appoints a 15-member electoral commission to resolve the disputed election. In what is little more than a back-

room deal, the Republicans agree to abandon Reconstruction policies in
exchange for the Presidency.The
so-called “Compromise of 1877” results in an end to military intervention in
the South and restores “home rule.”

Mar. 5 TNRutherford B.
Hayes is inaugurated the nation’s nineteenth President (1877-1881).He quickly withdraws federal troops from the
South, and ends federal support for the remaining Reconstruction
governments.This agreement officially ends Reconstruction.The South begins the process of codifying and
enforcing segregation.Although
Tennessee will elect a number of black politicians over the next few years, the
last African American state legislator will end his term in 1893, and no other
will be seated until 1964.Violations of
black civil rights will not again be addressed on a national scale until after
World War II.

Mar. 15The Nation reports that “the
great body of the Republican party is ... opposed to the continuance at the
South of the policy of military interference and coercion as pursued by General
Grant.”

June 14Henry
Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American to graduate from West Point.

1878

--- TNJames
Carroll Napier, an 1872 graduate of the Howard University Law School, is
elected the first black city councilman in Nashville, serving five terms.He will later serve as Register of the United
States Treasury under President William Howard Taft (1911-1913).

--- TNThe
Black Exodus to Kansas and other Western states, which began about 1872, comes
gradually to an end.More than 2,400
people have migrated from Nashville alone.

--- TNDuring 1881,
despite the black representatives in the House, the 42nd Tennessee
Legislature passes the first “Jim Crow” law in the South, requiring the
segregation of the races on railroad cars.By 1900 all Southern states will have segregated their transportation
systems, a move sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 with the Plessy
v. Ferguson decision.Future laws
will be passed that discriminate against African Americans regarding public
school attendance, housing, and the use of public facilities such as
restaurants, theaters, and hotels.In
1967, when the Court rules miscegenation laws unconstitutional, 16 states will still
have laws prohibiting interracial marriage.It will be November 2000 before Alabama, the last hold-out, repeals its
law – although 40% of the electorate votes to keep it!

---TNJohn W. Boyd, a Republican, represents Tipton County in the 42nd and
43rd General Assemblies, 1881-1885. He is appointed to the
committees on Immigration, New Counties and County Lines, and Tippling and
Tippling Houses.

--- TNThomas Frank Casselsis a Republican from Shelby County,serving in the 42nd General
Assembly from 1881 to xxxxxxxxxxxxxx1883.He is appointed
to the committees on
Education and Common Schools, Judiciary, Privileges and Elections, and Public
Roads.

--- TNIsaac F. Norrisis a Republican from Shelby County, to serve in the 42ndGeneral
Assembly from 1881-1883.He is xxxxxxxxxxxxxxappointed
to the committees on Banks,
Claims, Immigration, and Public Grounds and Buildings.

--- TNThomas A. Sykesrepresents
Davidson County in the legislature, in spite of
decreased black voting strength brought on xxxxxxxxxxxxxxby a new poll tax and acts of violence
against blacks.A Republican, he is
appointed to the committees on Claims and Penitentiary.

--- TNStyles L. Hutchinsopens a law office in Chattanooga and becomes a partner in a newspaper, The Independent Age,

arrangements for persons of color who may be entitles to admission." It passes its first reading and is referred to the

Judiciary Committee; after passing its second reading, it is referred to
the Committee on Education and Common Schools, where it is tabled.

Feb. 16 TNThomas A. Sykes
introduces House Bill No.
289, to admit AfricanAmerican
students “into the school for the blind at Nashville and the school for the
deaf and dumb at Knoxville, in separate accommodations provided for them.”The bill passes its first reading and is
referred to the Judiciary Committee.A
week later it passes its second reading.

repeal
Chapter 131 of an act passed March
19, 1879.”It passes its
first reading and is referred to the Judiciary Committee, where it is tabled.

Feb. 24 TNAfter two vicious lynchings in Springfield,
the General Assembly has passed a resolution condemning “this violation of law
as tending to subvert all government, and as deserving prompt punishment”;
legislators have also passed a bill to punish any sheriff whose negligence
allows a prisoner to be taken from his custody “and put to death by violence.”Hoping to take advantage of the legislature’s
unanticipated disposition toward justice, Thomas F. CasselsintroducesHouse Bill No.
478to compensate families of the victims of mob
violence.His bill passes the first
reading but dies in committee.

Feb. 26 TNIsaac F. NorrisintroducesHouse Bill No.
510, concerning the
payment of wages of laborers.It passes
its first reading and is referred to the Judiciary Committee.It passes its second reading 29 March; there
are no further references.

Mar. 10 TNThomas A. SykesintroducesHouse Bill No. 560, to eliminate discrimination against blacks in jury selection
for circuit and criminal courts. The bill passes its second reading March 29 but is apparently tabled before being
brought to a vote.

Mar. 24 TNHouse Bill No. 73is taken up as a special order.A number of amendments are offered; Cassels' attempt to call the

previous question on the passage of the bill fails for lack
of a second; a motion to table the bill and all amendments prevails.

Mar. 30 TNThe four black legislators [Boyd, Cassels, Norris, and Sykes] file a protest against the
rejection of House Bill No.
70, saying that Chapter 130 “authorizes railroad companies and their employes, unjustly,
cruelly, wantonly, without just cause of provocation, and in violation of the
common law and the laws of the general government, to oppress and

discriminate
against more than four hundred thousand citizens of the State of Tennessee, and
the colored people of all other States who may desire to travel in Tennessee,”
and that it “wickedly, cruelly, and inhumanly attempts to deny to persons
aggrieved by the provisions of the said act any remedy or redress of grievances
in the State courts of Tennessee.”

Mar. 30House Bill No. 289, admitting black students into the school
for the blind and the school for the deaf and dumb, passes

by a vote of 59-1 and becomes law.

Apr. 7 TNThe Tennessee
House of Representatives passes a “compromise” bill, Senate Bill No. 342, permitting “separate but equal”
facilities for African Americans on trains.This bill requires railroad companies either to partition off a portion
of a first-class car for black passengers who have paid first-class fare, or to
provide separate cars for blacks.Having
passed the Senate 18-1, it passes the House 50-2.Norris and Sykes vote against
the bill; Boyd is absent; Cassels abstains.Thirteen other Southern states will follow
Tennessee’s lead and segregate public carriers over the next few years.

Apr. 14 TNThe
General Assembly passes a $10,000 appropriations bill for the State Normal College, which will be augmented by

a $6,000-9,000 grant
from the Peabody Education Fund for student scholarships.

Apr. 14 TNThe
State Board of Education reports that it is authorized by the General Assembly to spend "$10,000 annually for

Normal School purposes,”
$2,500 of which is reserved “for the normal education of colored teachers.”The Board meanwhile invites the state’s black colleges to submit
proposals “to educate the colored candidates for teachers.”

June 3 TNThe State Board of Education asks the
governor to notify the legislature “that only $2,500 in gross is appropriated
for the Colored Normal School.”

June 15 TNThe
State Board of Education appropriates $50 per year for the education of each African American scholarship

student.That gives each Senatorial district two black students, who will be appointed
by the Senator from that district from among those receiving the highest scores
on a standard examination.The schools
approved for the education of normal students are Knoxville College, Knoxville;
Freedmen’s Normal Institute, Maryville; Fisk University, Nashville Theological
and Normal Institute, and Central Tennessee College, Nashville; and LeMoyne
Normal Institute, Memphis.

July 2President
James Garfield is shot by assassin Charles Guiteau.Garfield will lie in the White House for weeks, mortally

wounded but clinging to life as doctors
attempt to save him.

July 4The
first president of Tuskegee Institute, Dr. BookerT. Washington, who was born a slave, officially opens the Normal

School for Colored Teachers in Macon
County, Alabama.Washington is a
champion of vocational education as a means to African American self reliance.

Sept. 19President Garfield dies, more than
eleven weeks after he was shot.Chester
A. Arthur, a Republican from Vermont, becomes the twenty-first President (1881-1885).

Nov. 30 TNJessee [sic] Graham is listed in the State School Board minutes as a recipient of a Peabody Scholarship to attend

Fisk University.

1882

--- TNMore than half the convicts in the
Tennessee State Prison at Nashville are now being leased out as laborers.

--- TNBetween 1882 and 1930 Tennessee has
214 confirmed lynching victims: most in middle and west Tennessee, most

(83%) African Americans.

---
TNCharles Spencer Smith founds the Sunday School Union
of the A.M.E. Church at 206 Public Square, Nashville. The

publishing house is the first and only steam printing establishment owned and managed by an African American.

Smith, elected
in 1874 to a term in the Alabama House of Representatives, received a medical
degree from Central xxxxxxxTennessee College in 1880,In 1900 he will become a bishop of the
A.M.E. Church and in 1911 will be the first black xxxxxxxto receive a Doctor of
Divinity degree from Victoria College in Toronto. [Roseman]

---The Supreme Court rules in United
States vs. Harris that the Klan Act (see May 31, 1870) is partially unconstitutional,

asserting
that Congress’s power under the 14th Amendment does not apply to
private conspiracies.

Apr. 6 TNIn the second extra House
Session, Thomas A. SykesintroducesHouse Bill No. 3,
“To exempt educational institutions from taxation.”It passes the first and second readings and
is referred to the Committee on Education and Common Schools.It is eventually tabled.

1883

---A
flood of civil rights cases strikes down the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875. Congress may no longer legislate on

civil
rights issues unless states pass discriminatory laws.

--- TNLeonidas (Leon) Howardis
elected to represent Shelby County in the 43rd General Assembly from
1883 to 1884. A xxxxxxxxxxxxxxRepublican, he helps
defeat two
blacks (one is Isaac Norris) running on the Democratic ticket. He is appointed to the committee on Military Affairs.

--- TNSamuel Allen McElwee, a Republican, is elected to the 43rd
(as well as, later, the 44th and 45th) General Assembly,

xrepresenting Haywood County from
1883-1888.He is appointed to the
committees on Military Affairs and Public Printing.

--- TNDavid F. Rivers is elected to represent Fayette County as
a Republican in the 43rd and 44th General Assemblies,

1883-1886, although he is
not able to serve his second term. He is appointed to the committees on Education and

Common Schools, Federal Relations, and Public Printing. Although there are
twice as many black residents in Fayette xxxxxxxxxxxxxxCounty as white, the county will send
only two African American representatives to Nashville: Rivers(1883-1884) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxand Monroe W. Gooden(1887-1888).

--- TNJohn W. Boydserves a second House term representing Tipton
County. He is appointed to the committee on

authorizing the appointment of an Assistant
Superintendent of Public Instruction, who will be responsible for the education
of African American students.

Feb. 15 TNHouse Bill No. 12 has been made the special order for the
session, having been passed over three times earlier.

McElweereduces the appropriation to
black students, but the House votes to table the bill; however, they prove willing
to approve the committee’s bill on the same subject and appropriate $3,300 per year for normal
school xxxxxxxxxxxxxxscholarships for African American
students, making each scholarship worth $50.

paying first-class fare. This bill is one
of several representing the black legislators’ more tightly focused effort to weaken
the power of Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875.It passes its first and second readings and is referred to the Judiciary
Committee.

Mar. 21 TNAfter hours of debate, Leon Howard offers an amendment repealing only the provision of the Act of
1875 that pertains to railroads; it is defeated by a vote of 64-27.

Mar. 24 TNW. A. Milliken offers an amendment to Boyd's House Bill No. 663, requiring railroad companies to provide separate cars for different
passengers.It passes by a vote of
56-19, with Boydvoting against it, and Howard and McElwee(both
deeply opposed to the separate-but-equal provision) abstaining.

Apr. 24 TNDavid F. Riversis listed
as the recipient of a Peabody Scholarship in the minutes of the State Board of
Education.Appointed by Senator Cason,
District 12, he attends Roger Williams University.

May 1 TNEben
S. Stearns, President of the Peabody Normal College, lists the "Requirements for Obtaining and Holding Peabody

Scholarships at
the Normal College at Nashville, Tenn.”Students meeting
all the scholarship requirements can receive up to $200 per year for board and
other college expenses.

--- TNIda B. Wells files a lawsuit against
the Chesapeake & Ohio & South-western Railroad Company for segregation
on the company’s railroad cars.Thomas F. Casselsis her first lawyer. [Goings]
Wells will soon replace him for being too accommodating to the railroad
lawyers.

Feb. 28 TNMore than 300 black leaders from 17 Tennessee counties meet in Nashville to discuss the role of African Americans in

local and
national elections.
The largest delegations are from Shelby County, with 62 delegates; Davidson, 52;
and Haywood, 48.Thomas F. Cassels, serving as chairman, shares his concerns
that many current state laws violate the constitutional rights of black
Tennesseans.James C. Napier, the
keynote speaker, stresses the need for political unity among black voters.Samuel A. McElwee’s demand that black unity occur within
the Republican party stirs up enormous
controversy.The convention ends by
warning that failure to support black causes will erode black commitment to the
party.

--- TNAt the State Republican Conventiom Samuel A McElwee is elected temporary chairman and is chosen as one of two

delegates (the other is General George Maney)
to the Chicago Presidential Convention, which nominates James G. Blaine.

June 24John Lynch is the first black to be
elected chairman of the Republican National Convention.

Nov. 4Grover Cleveland, a Democrat from
New York, is elected president.

--- TNJohn W. Boydchallenges his loss in the Senate election for Tipton and Fayette counties, claiming fraud when the

District 4 ballot box mysteriously disappears. Although he carries his challenge to the State Senate, members vote

mysteriously
disappears. Although he carries his challenge to the State

to
seat his opponent.

1885

--- TNGreene E. Evansis elected
Republican representative from Shelby County to the 44th General
Assembly, 1885-1886. He is on the
committee on Education & Common Schools.

--- TNWilliam A. Feildsis elected to represent Shelby County in the 44th General
Assembly from 1885-1886.A Republican, Feilds
is a school teacher and principal in the 5thCivil District of Shelby County.He is appointed to the committees on Federal
Relations, Internal Improvement, and Public Roads.

--- TNWilliam C. Hodgeis the
first black legislator elected from Hamilton County, serving as a Republican in
the 44th General Assembly from 1885-1886.He is appointed to the committees on
Education and Common Schools, Military Affairs, and Penitentiary.

--- TNSamuel A. McElwee, serving a second term in the legislature representing Haywood
County, receives the Republican nomination for Speaker of the House.Though the nomination is largely symbolic in
the Democratic-controlled legislature, McElwee receives 32 votes.He serves on the committee on Banks. During this year his wife dies, leaving him with two
small children.Placing the children
with relatives, he enters Central Tennessee College, earning a law degree the following
year.

1901, as a member of the 1885 General Assembly, but does not appear in
any records in the House Journal for that year. According to family members, Rivers, having been
driven out of Fayette County by racial violence, does not serve out the
legislative term to which he has been elected but moves to Nashville and takes
a position teaching theology at Roger Williams University.

Jan. 15 TNWilliam A. Feildsintroduces House
Bill No. 119,To make school
attendance compulsory.It passes its
first reading and is referred to the Committee on Education and Common Schools.

Jan. 19 TNWilliam C. Hodge introduces House Bill No. 139, To amend the
road law of 1883.It passes first
reading and is referred to the Committee on Public Roads.It is tabled on its second reading on
February 27.

Jan. 19 TNWilliam C. Hodge introduces House Bill No. 140, To amend the
road law.It passes first reading and is
referred to the Committee on Public Roads.On its second reading on February 27, it is tabled.

Jan. 19 TNWilliam C. Hodge ntroduces House Bill No. 141, to repeal Chapter
130of the Acts of 1875.It passes its first reading, and then, on 29 January, its second
reading.

first and
second readings and is referred to the Judiciary Committee.On February 28 it is withdrawn without
explanation.

Feb. 19 TNGreene E. Evanspresents House Bill No. 514, at the request of Governor Bate, providing for the
appointment of an xxxxxxxxxxxxxxAssistant State Superintendent of Public Instruction.The bill passes its first and second
readings, and is then sent to the Committee on Education and Common Schools, of which Evans is a member,
where it is tabled.

May 20 TNThe State School Board asks the General
Assembly to repeal the act reducing the salary of the State
Superintendent.

May 25 TNThe General Assembly meets in extraordinary
session.They will meet through June 12.

May 27 TNGreene E. Evansintroduces House Bill No. 29, To provide for the appointment of an Assistant Superintendent
of Public Instruction.It passes first
and second readings and is referred to the Committee on Education and Common
Schools, where it is tabled.

May 27 TNWilliam A. Feildsintroduces House Bill No. 34, To empower
Managers of Teachers’ Institutes to examine and issue certificates, to be
approved by the County Superintendent.It passes first and second readings and is referred to the Committee on
Education and Common Schools, where it is tabled.

June 3 TNWilliam C. Hodgeintroduces House Bill No. 63, To provide for
the protection of the ballot box.It
passes first and second readings and is referred to the Committee on Elections,
where it dies.

June 25African American priest Samuel David
Ferguson is ordained a bishop of the Episcopal church;
he will serve until his death in 1916.

1886

--- TNThe
Sunday School Union, where the first Sunday school literature by African
Americans is published, moves from Bloomington, Indiana, to a five-story brick
and stone building at 206 Public Square in Nashville.

--- TNThis
year will see the establishment of the first African American-owned drug store
in Nashville.

Feb. 20 TNThe State Board of Education submits
payment for sixty-one African American students who have received State

--- TNSamuel A. McElweereceives a
law degree from Central Tennessee College in Nashville.

Sept. 20 TNNashville’s
first public high school for African American students opens: Meigs Public School offers the first classes for

9th and 10th graders;
new courses for 11thgraders will be added in the 1887-1888
school year.Ten years later (1897-1898
school year) the high school department at Meigs is
transferred to Pearl High School, from which the first class will graduate on 2
June 1898.

Dec. 8The American Federation of Labor
is organized, signaling the rise of the labor movement.Black Americans are excluded from all major
unions of the period.

1887

--- TNMonroe W. Gooden, the only Democrat among the African American legislators, is elected to represent Fayette

county in the 45th General Assembly
from 1887-1888.He is appointed to the
committees on Agriculture and Federal Relations.

--- TNStyles Linton Hutchins, a Republican, begins his legislative term, representing Hamilton
County in the 45thGeneral Assembly from 1887-1888.He is appointed to the committees on Education and Common Schools, and
New Counties and County Lines.

--- TNSamuel A. McElwee, a Republican, is elected to a
third term representing Haywood County. He is appointed to the

committees on Charitable Institutions, Elections, and
Judiciary.Gooden, Hutchins, and McElwee
are the last African Americans elected to serve in the Tennessee General
Assembly until Memphis voters elect A. W. Willis in 1964, more than 75 years
later.

Jan. 7 TNIn
the wake of a brutal lynching in West Tennessee, Samuel A. McElwee introduces House
Bill No. 5, to prevent
mob xxxxxxxxxxxxxxviolence.The bill passes its first and
second readings and is referred to the Judiciary committee.McElwee makes xxxxxxxxxxxxxxseveral attempts to have the bill declared the
special order
for the session (Feb. 16, 21, and 22).

Jan. 12 TNStyles L. Hutchinsintroduces House
Bill No. 136, to repeal a
section of the Chattanooga charter making poll taxes a requirement for voting
in city elections.It passes its second
reading a week later.

the South: new laws are sending many
African Americans to prison for minor offenses, and convicts are being forced
to do jobs that are now unavailable to free laborers.The bill passes its first and second readings
and is referred to the Committee on Penitentiary, where it is tabled.

Feb. 22 TNHouse Bill No. 5, to prevent mob violence, having been delayed for several days, is at last made the special order for

for the afternoon session.Samuel A. McElweemakes a
powerful speech in
its support, demanding reform: “I stand here today and enter my most solemn
protest against mob violence in Tennessee . . . .Great
God, when will this Nation treat the Negro as an American citizen? . . . As a
humble representative of the Negro race, and as a member of this body, I stand
here today and wave the flag of truce between the races and demand a
reformation in Southern society.”The
Judiciary Committee offers a substitute bill.By a 41-36 vote, both bills are tabled.

Mar. 5 TNMorristown
Seminary and Normal Institute, Morristown, Tennessee, is designated as one of the colleges eligible for

Peabody Scholarship students “of African
descent.”

Mar. 23 TNHouse Bill No. 136, to amend
the charter of Chattanooga to eliminate poll taxes, passes on third
reading.The ease of the bill’s passage
suggests that whites have not yet realized the effectiveness of the poll tax as
a method of restricting black voters from exercising their rights.

Jun. 19 TNSampson
W. Keeble dies of “a congestive
chill” (probably malaria) in Richmond, Texas, and may have been buried

there. He is listed with his daughter and son-in-law on a gravestone in Greenwood Cemetery on Elm Hill Pike in

Nashville, near the graves of James C. Napier and publisher R. H. Boyd.

Aug. 15Eatonville, Florida, becomes the
first African American township to beincorporated into the United
States.

Dec. 7 TNCentral
Tennessee College, Fisk University, and Roger Williams University ask the State Board of Education to urge

the General Assembly “to
restore the former appropriations for colored scholarships to $3300.”

1888

--- TNSamuel A. McElweeattends the
Republican National Convention in Chicago as one of two delegates representing
Tennessee.Thomas F. Casselsserves as a Republican Presidential elector.

---Two large
African-American-owned banks open during the year: the Savings Bank of the
Grand Fountain United Order of the Reformers (Richmond, Virginia) and Capital
Savings Bank (Washington, D.C.).

1889

--- TNWith more than a 2/3 majority in both Houses of the
General Assembly, Tennessee Democrats disfranchise black voters

in the state by passing four restrictive bills sponsored by
Senators Myers, Dortch, and Lea, as well as reinstating a poll tax urged by
Governor Robert L. Taylor. [See entry titled “Disfranchising Laws” in Tennessee Encyclopedia of History &
Culture: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=380
.]This is the first legislative session
in nearly ten years in which no African American representative is seated.

--- TNThe General Assembly, for reasons
that are unspecified but probably related to the same political climate that permitted

the passage of laws limiting black
suffrage, cuts the appropriation for “colored normal scholarships” from $3,300
to $1,500 per year, making each individual scholarship worth only $22.70.In his 1889 Annual Report of the State School
Board to the Legislature, Board Secretary Frank Goodman protests the cuts and
requests that the original appropriation be restored. [Lauder]

(none of which change the scholarship
appropriation in any way) will pass both the Senate and the House before the
end of the 1889 session.This vote is
particularly surprising in light of the disfranchising bills passed during the
session.

1890

---According
to the 1890 census, African Americans make up 11.9% of the U.S. population (7,488,676 of 62, 947,714).

--- TNThe Black Northern Migration draws
thousands of black Tennesseans to the industrial cities of the North. Between

1870 and 1930 Tennessee’s black population declines to 18.3% from an earlier
figure of 25.6%.

---The
American Baptist Publication Society no longer publishes the writings of African American ministers because

Southern white readers have objected to them.

---“Pitchfork
Ben” Tillman is elected governor of South Carolina.An apologist for violence against blacks, Tillman calls

his victory “a triumph of ... white supremacy." His words are generally more inflammatory than his policies -- he makes

Violent uprisings continue until 1895, when the General Assembly ends the practice of convict leasing.

--- TNVigilante groups produce havoc
throughout Tennessee.A Sevier County groups known as the White Caps begins a

reign of terror, beating and occasionally
killing people (primarily women) they believed to be “lewd or adulterous.”Their activities continue nearly unchecked
until 1896.

--- TNApproximately 235
African Americans will lose their lives to lynchings this year; 204 black Tennesseans will be lynched

during the years between 1890 and
1950.

March TNAfter Ida B. Wells speaks out in The Memphis Free Speech
against a recent lynching, a white mob burns the

newspaper office.Wells is forced to move out of the state to
guarantee her safety,

May 20 TNFrederick
Douglass speaks at the First Colored Baptist Church in response to recent lynchings in Nashville and

Goodlettsville.

Dec. 1 TNDr.
Miles V. Lynk, a graduate of Meharry Medical School and the first African American physician in Madison County,

publishes the first national medical
journal for black physicians, The Medical and Surgical Observer.He is 21 years old.He will later found the University of West
Tennessee, earn a law degree, serve as Dean of the School of Nurse Training of
Terrill Memorial Hospital in Memphis, and become the ninth recipient of the
Distinguished Service Award from the National Medical Association.

Dec. 27Biddle
University (NC) defeats Livingstone College (NC) 5-0 in the first footabll game between teams from black

colleges.

1892

--- TNWorking as an emigration agent for a railroad company, Isaac F. Norris moves his family to the newly opened xxxxxxxxxxxxxOklahoma Territory, where he will continue to be active in politics..

1893

Mar. 4Grover
Cleveland is sworn in to his second term as President, the first covering the years 1885-1889, and the second

running from 1893-1897.

--- TNAfter about 50 years of the practice
known as convict leasing, the Tennessee General Assembly finally addresses the

issue and passes legislation to construct a new
state penitentiary and abolish convict leasing at the expiration of the lease
contract in 1896.

--- TNDavid F. Rivers takes a position as pastor
of the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Kansas City, Kansas. By 1900 he

will be serving as pastor of the Berean Baptist Church in Washington, D.
C.

1894

---African
American workers are hired by the Pullman Company as strike breakers after a costly strike by employees.

that the “Negro problem" will be resolved if the South abides by a policy of gradualism and accommodation. Much of

what Washington
proposes is black self-help: African Americans will rise socially and
politically if they work, save, and xxxxxxxgain an education, but whites must be
willing to accept and encourage this effort.

Sept. 24The National
Baptist Convention of the United States is created by the union of several smaller Baptist
organizations.The Baptist church becomes
the nation’s largest African American religious denomination.

Dec. 4In the
state Constitutional Convention, South Carolina adopts a new constitution containing an "understanding" clause

designed to eliminate black voters.

1896

--- TN xxx Samuel L. McElweeand James Napier are named to the original committee of the Negro Department of the

Tennessee Centennial.Both will withdraw before the Exposition
opens on
May 1, 1897.[Couto]

accommodations on railroads, saying segregation
is not necessarily discrimination.Justice Harlan’s dissent (“The Constitution is color-blind!”) insists
that all segregation isinherently discrimination, that states cannot impose criminal
penalties upon a citizen who merely wants to use public highways and
carriers.It is this very argument that
will eventually be used to win Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

July 21The
National Association of Colored Women is established, with Mary Church Terrell as its first president.

Nov. 3William
McKinley, an Ohio Republican, is elected President.

1897

---TNxxxx Jesse M. H. Graham is elected
as a Republican representing Montgomery County in the 50th General Assembly.

He arrives in Nashville to
find his seat contested on the first day of session.Although he is provisionally seated on 4 January 1897, his election
is subject to investigation by the Committee on Elections.The committee decides on 20 January that
neither Graham nor the challenger is entitled to the seat (Graham, because he
does not have the required three-year legal residence).The House passes a resolution declaring Graham’s
seat vacant by a vote of 76-0, with 23 not voting.

Mar. 4William
McKinley is inaugurated as President (1897-1901).

May 1 TNThe
Tennessee Centennial Exposition opens in Nashville, to run until October 31. It was a successful effort to stimulate

Apr. 21The
Spanish-American War begins.Black
volunteers make up sixteen regiments, four of which will see combat. Five

African Americans win Congressional Medals of Honor for their valor.

Apr. 25Announcing
their judgment in the case of Williams v. Mississippi, the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Mississippi

Constitution, which requires voters to pass a literacy test in order to receive a ballot.This law, clearly aimed at disfranchising
black voters, places the power of interpretation in the hands of local,
politically appointed registrars.

June 2 TNThe first class graduates from Pearl High School,
Nashville’s African American high school.

Sept 9 TNDeath of former Representative William A. Feilds, a member of the Shelby County Court, whose surviving members